To date, personalization installations for carrying out a method for personalizing a large number of security documents or smart cards are known in which processing stations for carrying out individual personalization steps on the security document running through them, e.g. a passport, are arranged one behind the other in such a way that they are assigned to a common main transport belt. Such processing stations, also known as processing modules, are oriented along the main transport belt in such a way that a security document runs through each processing station during the processing operation in the running direction of the main transport belt, i.e. the processing station is arranged above or below the main transport belt. The security documents arranged successively one behind the other thus run through the individual processing stations one after the other and undergo personalization operations of varying length that have to be carried out thereon, such as for example the printing of the surface, laser treatment of the surface to create a hologram, or a page-turning operation. Accordingly, the processing rate of the personalization installation as a whole depends on the personalization operation of the processing station which takes the longest processing time, so that the procedures of the entire personalization installation must be adapted thereto. As a result, the personalization installation has a low possible throughput compared to the processing times of the faster-operating processing stations.
In order to avoid such a “traffic jam” of security documents which would take place if the security documents in the fast processing stations upstream of the slow processing station were to carry on processing continuously at the time-optimized fast processing times, slower-operating processing stations are arranged in multiples along the transport belt in order to allow the simultaneous processing of a plurality of security documents. This may be achieved for example in the case of laser processing stations by moving the security documents or cards to and away from individual laser processing stations arranged next to one another at the side of the main transport belt, so that the security documents which would otherwise form a “traffic jam” can be distributed between various laser processing stations. However, this requires a high outlay on additional technical devices, namely on the one hand for belts and transport elements for lateral transport and on the other hand for the multiple arrangement of laser processing stations.